Postcards for my Sister by Alessandra Naccarato

Alessandra Naccaratohas won the 2017 CBCPoetry Prizefor Postcards for my Sister.

She will receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, will have an opportunity to attend a 10-day writing residency at theBanff Centre for Arts and Creativityand have their story published onCBCBooksand inAir CanadaenRoutemagazine.

• How Alessandra Naccarato wrote the poem that won the CBC Poetry Prize

If you're interested in theCBCLiterary Prizes, theCBCNonfiction Prizeopens on Jan. 1, 2018.

You can readPostcards for my Sister by Alessandra Naccaratobelow.

Postcards for my Sister

Above the green village, there is a hill where no one lives.
Our great-grandmother is buried there.

Before the town fell down, they spread
their cards and drank. Big-mouthed women, fat
as trees, their ceilings hung with meat.

A whistle of us in their hands, as they made plans
for weddings and daughters.

Our grandmother spoke to a man on the phone,
and this was how she was married.
Her long blue skirt, two gold front teeth.

On that green hill, I lay down with a man and read.
The floors have turned to moss.

There are no gravestones there.

*

Shell beach, a fawn with broken neck, weeping.
Sophie's hand on split bone, a crown of rocks and seaweed.

I was certain I would mother alone, then calves were born
all spring and our sister arrived to the coast. Nine months

in a busted sedan, crying. Welfare kitchens, our shared father
they are richer on the road, her mother says and how can I

argue? We can't expect joy, I tell her, like you told me.
But that night, algae on the shore, phosphorescence,
and we walk into the cold, bright glitter. We all fall in love,

eventually. The fawn on shell beach, weeping until it is still.
Sophie placing a shell on its eye. The water will guide her away,
by morning. The tide has its own kind of care.

*

The small house where you would not stop screaming.
The round body you were not ready to leave.

There were no legal midwives, but the women knew
how to turn a child.

Three days, the small house, our mother screaming.
She would not go to the hospital.

We come from this woman,
from women like this.

*

The plum tree where my friend parked
to sleep with his feet in starlight. One year past

the public clinic, where a nurse counted backwards in time.
On the dance floor, he whispered

it's ok to play gatekeeper

to his absent wife, to me as I whirled silk into flowers, small rain
of blood at thigh: immaculate re-conception.

Four weeks along, though I'd known
the alcoholic for three. Unreliability of time,

of fathers. The word inside mother is tragiversari.
To turn away is to turn to, straddle, go on.

We have always taught each other
how to give birth, and not. Our same child came, he told me

under the plum tree. Once his ex-wife's sadness
had spun out and dried. Rowan was always his name.

*

Above the green village, a hill where no one lives.
Our grandmother is buried there.

After the earthquake, they spread
their cards and drank again. Big-mouthed women, stern
as orchards, sending their daughters away.

The girls were told to not turn back. Our grandmother
waited sixty years, then packed her suitcase again.

Her second marriage ended with a Greyhound ticket.
In a long blue skirt, two gold front teeth, sheleft to pick
wild mushrooms.

Before the flight, in our mother's bright kitchen, she joked
about the life of single women.

On that green hill, I lay down in her old scarf.
The grass is bright with flowers.

There are no gravestones there.

CBC Books4:25Alessandra Naccarato recites Postcards for my Sister

Alessandra Naccarato reads her submission to the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize.

Read the other finalists:

• Tourists Stroll a Victoria WaterwaybyCorneliaHoogland
• Carryby Sarah Kabamba
• Lunar Landing, 1966 by Laboni Islam
• Saying the Names Shantyby Harold Rhenisch

About AlessandraNaccarato:

Alessandra Naccarato is a poet, essayist and arts educator. She was the recipient of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers' Trust of Canada and was a finalist for the 2014 CBCPoetry Prize. Her writing has appeared across Canada and the United States. She has toured as a spoken word artist, worked with thousands of youth across the countryand holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia.